Index insurance products circumvent many of the transaction costs and asymmetric information problems that obstruct provision of low value conventional insurance policies in developing countries. Recent years have seen tremendous growth in index insurance pilots in developing countries, but...

Index insurance products circumvent many of the transaction costs and asymmetric information problems that obstruct provision of low value conventional insurance policies in developing countries. Recent years have seen tremendous growth in index insurance pilots in developing countries, but...

This paper presents a simple two-period, dual economy model in which migration options may affect the informal financing of educational investments. When credit contracts are universally available and perfectly enforceable, spatially varied returns to human capital have no effect on educational...

In this paper, we use the experience of Kenya's failing Coffee Cooperatives to show that, under certain circumstances, membership based organizations can give rise to perverse incentives that undermine the benefits of organizing and lead to a reduction in member productivity and welfare. We...

Index insurance products circumvent many of the transaction costs and asymmetric information problems that obstruct provision of low value conventional insurance policies in developing countries. Recent years have seen tremendous growth in index insurance pilots in developing countries, but...

The effective design and implementation of interventions that reduce vulnerability and poverty require a solid understanding of underlying poverty dynamics and associated behavioral responses. Stochastic and dynamic benefit streams can make it difficult for the poor to learn the value of such...

This paper presents a simple two-period, dual economy model in which migration options may affect the informal financing of educational investments. When credit contracts are universally available and perfectly enforceable, spatially varied returns to human capital have no effect on educational...

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of a new index-based livestock insurance (IBLI) product designed to compensate for area average predicted livestock mortality loss in northern Kenya, where previous work has established the presence of poverty traps. We simulate household-specific wealth...

Weather-related shocks are a major threat to the health and livelihoods of vulnerable farmers and herders in low-income, arid, and semi-arid regions of the world. Index insurance represents a promising tool for mitigating the impacts of such risk but in practice has exhibited low uptake rates by...

The objective of this paper is to frame the key issues and summarize the current state of knowledge about and innovations in index-based risk transfer products (IBRTPs) as they relate to the management of climate risk for poverty reduction, especially of chronic or persistent poverty. In the...